Family History on the Sabbath

The Sabbath day is a day of reflection, service, renewing of our covenants, and serving God and others. Prophets have always encouraged us to honor the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy and improve our Sabbath day worship. In his April 2015 general conference address President Russell M. Nelson called the Sabbath a “delight.” He invited us to make the Sabbath a delight by spending time doing family history: “Searching for and finding family members who have preceded you on earth—those who did not have an opportunity to accept the gospel while here—can bring immense joy” (“The Sabbath Is a Delight,” Ensign or Liahona, May 2015, 131).

In the 2017 RootsTech genealogical conference, Elder Ian S. Ardern shared, “We’ve been asked to make the Sabbath a delight. That’s a prophetic call, and surely doing family history is one of the better ways of making the Sabbath a delight—by doing it on the Sabbath.” Elder Eduardo Gavarett added that doing family history and indexing as a family can be a wonderful activity on the Sabbath.